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It’s not pleasant to be on the receiving end of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Malicious hackers can commandeer thousands of computers around the world, and order them to deluge a website with traffic – effectively clogging it up, preventing others from reaching the site, and bringing the website to its knees. As I’ve described before, DDoS attacks are the equivalent of “15 fat men trying to get through a revolving door at the same time” – nothing can move. In recent days a number of websites have been struck by DDoS attacks, seemingly co-ordinated by supporters of WikiLeaks against firms and websites who they feel have turned their back on the controversial whistle-blowing website